Australia Considers Smart Glasses Ban in Government Workplaces, While 70 People Sue Meta Over Unknowing Data Collection (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0185723658
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/21/0243250/australia-considers-smart-glasses-ban-in-government-workplaces-while-70-people-sue-meta-over-unknowing-data-collection
- Source link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/meta-glasses-captured-shared-intimate-100000025.html
But meanwhile "more than 70 people who bought, used or were recorded with Meta's smart glasses have sued the social media giant," [2]reports the Los Angeles Times , "claiming their intimate and sensitive images were exposed to workers abroad who are paid to review and label photos and videos."
> The contractors in Kenya work for companies that help train Meta's artificial intelligence, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit amended in late August. The smart glasses users, some in California, allege the gadget captured footage of themselves and family members undressing, going to the bathroom, having sex and entering passwords. In some cases, the people said they weren't aware the camera-equipped glasses were recording. One California user, referred to as PL18 in the lawsuit, alleges his glasses were unknowingly recording after he placed the smart glasses on the bathroom counter. "He noticed that at times photos of his family members using the bathroom and bathing began appearing in his gallery — footage no one in his household intended to take," the lawsuit said....
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> The 230-page lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Northern California, accuses Meta of fraud and false advertising, along with violating other consumer protection laws in various states. Tina Wolfson, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said the case also centers on Meta's surveillance of people's lives without their consent and the exploitation of their image and likeness. "People who bought these glasses and thought that they were cool gadgets weren't aware that every time they activated AI, video was sent to train Meta's AI," said Wolfson, a principal at law firm Ahdoot & Wolfson in Burbank. Meta disagrees with the allegations and intends to fight them.
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> "If you use Meta AI, we may review that data to help improve our products and people's experiences — this works the same way as many other companies. We take steps to filter this data to help remove identifying information and to protect people's privacy," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement...
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> The lawsuit alleges people wearing the smart glasses were unwittingly transmitting data to Meta whenever they used Meta AI by saying "Hey Meta," or sometimes accidentally when adjusting the glasses. "Every activation of the AI features, intentional or accidental, captures video and audio that is transmitted to Meta's servers, routed overseas, and reviewed by low-paid human workers who watch, label, and embed these moments into Meta's AI models," the lawsuit said...
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> The lawsuit also seeks to block Meta from deploying biometric tools through its glasses. The company has been exploring a controversial feature called "NameTag" that would allow people to identify others... A separate lawsuit, filed in September in a federal court in Illinois, alleges Meta has been using images of people's faces uploaded to their public Facebook and Instagram accounts to train AI that powers NameTag and other AI tools.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/australia-considers-banning-use-smart-glasses-government-buildings-2026-09-17/
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/meta-glasses-captured-shared-intimate-100000025.html
Re: (Score:2)
Yes Australia is a nanny state because the government *check's notes* bans something in its own offices?
You're not wrong in general. But choosing this story to make your point makes you look like a ranting anti-government conspiracy truth seeking lunatic.
How can anyone buy a Meta product (Score:2, Informative)
and expect any privacy at all? Even their VR headsets are subsidized by your data.
GLWT (Score:2, Insightful)
The privacy suits might be successful but:
> A separate lawsuit, filed in September in a federal court in Illinois, alleges Meta has been using images of people's faces uploaded to their public Facebook and Instagram accounts to train AI that powers NameTag and other AI tools.
Yeah that's gonna fail. Users definitely consented to that.
Ban them everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
The perverts and thugs buying/using these aren't using them for some benign reason; they're using them to invade the privacy of anyone they can, any way they can. That statement shouldn't surprise anyone: it's why these were designed, built, and marketed. They're explicitly intended to appeal to people just like Mark Zuckerberg: misogynists, psychopaths, sociopaths -- in other words, he's marketing to his peers. And predictably: it's working.
What comes next? The nonconsensual AI-constructed nudes, the stalking, the harassment, the extortion, the exploitation, everything that inevitably follows when some of the very worst people in the world are handed a powerful tool that they can readily use for whatever purpose they wish. To Zuck, these outcomes aren't problems to be solved; they're valid use cases to be supported and encouraged. They're the entire reason why he did this: he doesn't have to go out and be the creep if he has a willing army of creeps ready to do it for him.
These can be banned if "someone" gives it A Ok. (Score:2, Interesting)
The thing that always makes me "wonder", well not really, I know why it is... Android phones are unable to record phone calls, at least inside EU. Why is this ? Because for example in many countries within EU that's completely ok for individual to record phonecalls. Yet, feature not enabled, all third party apps blocked for doing so. Such a basic basic simple task for the phone to do nowadays... If You want entertain Yourself, try and find a reason why this is a The case...
What Google and Apple mean (Score:2)
"If you use Meta AI, we may ..."
/p. ... steal that data to increase corporate profits by letting visitors perve on your images and video. If you have images of naked people we may report you to state police because we don't want to be blamed for our part in spreading kiddie 'porn'.
Expecting privacy in public (Score:1)
I hear the argument constantly that one does not have any expectation of privacy in public. That certainly used to be true in the days before mass surveillance by governments or private organizations, indiscriminate and ubiquitous data collection, AI processing thereof, monetization of it, and the near-impossibility for the individual to know exactly what was collected. Despite having laws, like in many other countries, regarding the protection of private data, I have to wonder how well they are enforced. I
What about blind people? (Score:2)
Meta (and other similar) glasses are of great help to them.
Are blind people collateral damage here?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's a fix for that. Specify a color scheme for assistive devices, and make it illegal to misuse it. Specify that such devices or services must not retain data, it must not be used for AI training or similar, yada yada.
Recording by whom in government workspaces? (Score:3)
Government employees, or the members of the public who employ them?
Why just there? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love to R the FA, but it only tells me my ad blocker is working. This device should be banned everywhere, unless people consent to its use. You would not want to allow it in healthcare, conversations with lawyers or journalists, or, basically, anywhere in public.
Re:Why just there? (Score:5, Insightful)
"there is no right or expectation of privacy in public"
I agree (UK so different laws, but the principle is the same). However I increasingly feel this needs to be revised somehow. I'll admit up front I don't have all the answers here, but just intuitively it feels to me that this principle predates the era of cheap, automated mass surveillance whether government or private.
In the UK, privacy is protected via the Human Rights Act and UK GDPR. It provides for some level of protection, but it really seems to me that specific rules to address this kind of blanket recording need to start coming in. The definition of 'commercial', for instance. Is it commercial use if I record you on my glasses and then post it to Youtube? Arguably yes, since YouTube is a company and derives revenue from that. Same for Meta. But it's very, very far from clear to me if that claim has enough weight to prevail. A specific set of rules to address what is essentially a new phenomenon needs to be brought in.
Recording is not new. Photographing is not new. But the ease and scale via which it can be achieved, manipulated, tracked...that is new.
Re:Why just there? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Meta customer or user, the person with the glasses has had to agree to Meta's terms and conditions, including their data processing. For me though, an innocent bystander in the street, I haven't agreed to have information processed about me by Meta. Meta has a long suspected problem with [1]shadow profiles [wikipedia.org], and I don't want their massive processing capabilities to be able to reference me wherever I am, even if it's in a public place. They have no system for me to make a GDPR request about the data they're holding on me. Based on Meta's behaviour over many years and statements from Zuck about privacy, they simply cannot be trusted with people's personal data.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile
Re: (Score:3)
Just to add: if the government, including the police, started mass video surveillance, there would be justified outrage. Meta has more data processing than at least the UK government and consequently should be given less leeway.
What is public? (Score:2)
I went to my bank and one of the employees that talked to me was wearing them. Was the bank public? What was my expectation of privacy inside the bank?
Re: (Score:2)
The real problem isn't being recorded, it's what's being done with the recordings.
If you're going to legislate something, it should be what can be done with recordings more than stopping people from recording, because there are legitimate purposes for the latter.
We already have numerous laws where we criminalize doing something only for criminal purposes, so it's reasonable for the laws against recording to continue to exist, but also for them to apply only to recording with criminal intent. Then you can ta